Daily Caller Caught Lying Again

The conservative web site falsely reported, then scrubbed, claims that former Miss Universe Alicia Machado was a "porn star."

During the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on 26 September 2016 (and again during the third presidential debate three weeks later), the latter noted that her opponent had made several highly public sexist remarks over the course of his career. One instance cited by Clinton occurred in 1996, when Trump called the recently crowned Miss Universe, Alicia Machado of Venezuela, “Miss Piggy” due to her post-pageant weight gain:

CLINTON: This is a man who has called women pigs, slobs and dogs, and someone who has said pregnancy is an inconvenience to employers, who has said …

TRUMP: I never said that.

CLINTON: … women don’t deserve equal pay unless they do as good a job as men.

TRUMP: I didn’t say that.

CLINTON: And one of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty contest. He loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them. And he called this woman “Miss Piggy.” Then he called her “Miss Housekeeping,” because she was Latina. Donald, she has a name.

TRUMP: Where did you find this? Where did you find this?

CLINTON: Donald, she has a name. Her name is Alicia Machado. And she has become a US citizen and you can bet she is going to vote this November.

Naturally, after the debate Ms. Machado, now a naturalized U.S. citizen, expressed support for Hillary Clinton as her candidate of choice:

In keeping with their political bias, the Daily Caller quickly jumped in to disparage Ms. Machado by publishing an article falsely asserting that she was a “porn star” who had “appeared in pornographic videos”:

But after we published an article debunking such claims as untrue, the Daily Caller hastily scrubbed the opening paragraphs of their piece to remove any reference to “pornographic videos” featuring Ms. Machado.

Of course, the Daily Caller didn’t extend an apology to Ms. Machado for maligning her, they didn’t issue a correction, and they didn’t even alter their misleading and false headline (“Porn Star Campaigns For Hillary Clinton”). Instead, they simply replaced the opening of their article with one that was nearly as lacking in truth as the original:

As our article documents, the so-called “sex tape” referenced by the Daily Caller is nothing more than some grainy, night-vision footage from a Spanish reality TV show depicting two clothed figures in a bed writhing around under the covers, but no obvious sexual activity — an event that was quite possibly staged, definitely tamer than a good deal of what airs on prurient U.S. network television, and not at all within the standard definition of “sex tape.”

Through it all, the Daily Caller has kept their deceitful “Porn Star Campaigns for Hillary Clinton” headline intact, despite presenting zero evidence that Alicia Machado ever appeared in anything that could justifiably be considered “porn.” (Machado was featured in some Playboypictorials, but if posing nude for a men’s magazine is the standard for “porn,” then Melania Trump is a “porn star” of a greater magnitude than Alicia Machado.)

The Daily Caller was also recently caught lying about a non-existent connection between billionaire George Soros and voting machines used in the U.S., as well as fabricating quotes in an article about the Clinton Foundation in Haiti.